San Francisco, Dec 18 (IANS): Global networking major Cisco on Tuesday announced the acquisition of California-based semiconductor company Luxtera for $660 million.

The acquisition is expected to close in the third quarter of Cisco's fiscal year 2019, the company said in a statement.

Luxtera uses silicon photonics to build integrated optics capabilities for webscale and enterprise data centres, service provider market segments and other customers.

Cisco plans to incorporate Luxtera's technology across its intent-based networking portfolio, spanning enterprise, data centre and service provider markets.

"With Cisco's '2018 Visual Networking Index' projecting that global Internet traffic will increase threefold over the next five years, our customers are facing an exponential demand for Internet bandwidth," said David Goeckeler, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Networking and Security Business at Cisco.

"Luxtera will allow our customers to build the biggest, fastest and most efficient networks in the world," he added.

"We look forward to welcoming the @Luxtera team to Cisco! We are excited to have you as part of our team!" tweeted Chuck Robbins, Chairman and CEO, Cisco.